Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, we very much welcome those provisions. Having to undertake the hearings in public and to be present throughout them is something to which I referred briefly on the previous group of amendments. Any Mayor—I do not refer to the present office holder particularly—who felt that it would be appropriate to take over many applications would find that that was all he did. It should be possible for a delegation to go perhaps to the deputy Mayor for some of those functions, although that is not a matter for discussion now. We will see how they go but that could place a very large burden on the Mayor. I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I ask her for confirmation of something that she has already mentioned. I was scrabbling around among my papers to find a copy of the draft order for the Hansard reporters, who sent me a note saying that they had looked online but could not find it. I suppose that is understandable at this stage. The Mayor becomes the planning authority. Local planning authorities—the development control committee—will have a published agenda which normally includes an officer recommendation to approve or to reject an application about conditions, reserved matters and so on. As I understand it, the same procedure will apply with the Mayor, so it will not just be a matter of turning up to a hearing, but it will be known in advance—I think five days in advance—what the recommendation to the Mayor is. That is very similar to the way in which a local committee operates. It occurs to me that that may probably take over the chamber at city hall on a fairly permanent basis but that is a small price to pay. The Minister referred to Amendment No. 87CA as having the potential to create a monstrous process. I think that is right and it is something that local planning authorities have struggled with for some time. Most of them—I am a little shocked that it is not all of them—hear oral representations from both sides these days. When I chaired the committee in Richmond in 1983, I introduced that. I cannot believe that that was nearly 25 years ago. It is not, and does not have to be, a monstrous process. The local authority would need to get objectors together to sort out how they are represented and how many can speak. There is a point of principle here. I have worked on the assumption that if the Mayor takes over an application, it is because he disagrees with the borough’s draft decision. That is why I have framed it in this way. It could have been wider. For there to be confidence in the process, it is important that objectors as well as the applicant, whose position will be enshrined in statute, have the opportunity, through a representative if necessary, to turn up and explain their objections. One should not be too anecdotal, but my experience has been that, although it adds to the time, going through that process also adds immeasurably to the understanding of the outcome.